Mankind then is one community; also an organism. But within the human
organism abides the duality of soul and body; and the Community of Mankind
on earth is constituted of two orders, the spiritual and temporal, Church
and State.[410] There must be either co-ordination between State and
Church, body and soul, or subordination of the temporal and material to
the eternal and spiritual. To evoke an adjustment of what was felt to be
an actually universal opposition, was the chief problem of mediaeval
polity, and forms the warp and woof of conflicting theories. The Church
asserted a full spiritual supremacy even in things temporal, and, to
support the claim, brought sound arguments as well as foolish
allegory--allegory pretending to be horror-stricken at the vision of an
animal with two heads, a bicephalic monstrosity. But does not the Church
comprise all mankind? Did not God found it? Is not Christ its head, and
under Him his vicegerent Peter and all the popes? Then shall not the pope
who commands the greater, which is the spiritual, much more command the
less, the temporal? And all the argumentation of the two swords, delivered
to Peter, comes into play. That there are two swords is but a propriety of
administration. Secular rulers wield the secular sword at the pope’s
command. They are instruments of the Church. Fundamentally the State is
an ecclesiastical institution, and the bounds of secular law are set by
the law spiritual: the canon law overrides the laws of every State. True,
in this division, the State also is ordained of God, but only as
subordinate. And divinely ordained though it be, the origin of the State
lies in sin; for sin alone made government and law needful for man.[411]
On the other hand, the partisans of the State upheld co-ordination as the
true principle.[412] The two swords represent distinct powers, Sacerdotium
and Imperium. The latter as well as the former is from God; and the two
are co-ordinates, although of course the Church which wields the spiritual
sword is the higher. This theory creates no bicephalic monster. God is the
universal head. And even as man is body as well as soul, the human
community is State as well as Church; and the State needs the emperor for
its head, as the Church has the pope. The Roman Dominion, _imperium
mundi_, was legitimate, and by divine appointment has passed over to the
Roman-German emperor. Other views sustaining the scheme of co-ordination
upheld a plurality of states, rather than one universal Imperium. Of
course these opposing views of subordination or co-ordination of State and
Church took on every shade of diversity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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